Betty H. Cameron, widow of David Daniel (Dan) Cameron and sister-in-law of Bruce Cameron, died Tuesday. A service will be held for her at 1 p.m. Thursday at First Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, the church confirmed Tuesday. A visitation is scheduled from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Cameron Art Museum.

According to the obituary on the Andrews Mortuary website, Cameron was born in Wilmington in 1921, graduated from New Hanover High School and attended Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. During World War II she worked in the Wilmington shipyards.

Cameron's husband was a businessman, civic leader, philanthropist and former Wilmington mayor who died in 2005.

As a director of the Dan Cameron Family Foundation, Elizabeth Henderson Cameron – known to the Wilmington community as Betty - was involved in making several large gifts to Wilmington-area institutions, including a $2.1 million gift to New Hanover Regional Medical Center in 2007.

When NHRMC's women’s and children’s hospital was completed in 2008, its was named in Betty Cameron’s honor.

“We are saddened by the loss of Betty Cameron, and our thoughts and prayers are with her family,” said NRHMC president and CEO Jack Barto in a statement. “The generosity she has shown to New Hanover Regional Medical Center and this community will continue to impact so many lives for generations to come. 
 
“We, like so many others, will always be grateful to Mrs. Cameron and her family. Her legacy continues through the thousands of families cared for at the Betty H. Cameron Women's & Children's Hospital.”

The foundation also made several gifts to University of North Carolina Wilmington. Its most recent one made in 2008 – three years after Dan Cameron’s death – established a chair in UNCW’s Department of Public and International Affairs.

The Betty and Dan Cameron Family Distinguished Professorship of Innovation in the Nonprofit Sector, now held by Jeffrey L. Brudney, aims to help the “intellectual capital of UNCW’s faculty, students and staff to strengthen the nonprofit community in southeastern North Carolina,” according to the UNCW website.

"Establishing this professorship in the nonprofit sector is consistent with the work efforts that my mother and father were involved in throughout their lives," the foundation’s president, Dan and Betty Cameron’s son William H. Cameron, said at that time.

"It's a way of honoring their traditions and also giving to an area that will be of the greatest benefit to the university."

The foundation’s gift of $667,000 was matched by a gift of $250,000 from the C.D. Spangler Foundation, as well as $333,000 in matching funds from the state Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund, resulting in a total endowment of $1.25 million.

An earlier gift helped establish the Progress Energy/Betty Cameron Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship in 2004. Stephen Harper holds that endowed chair.

In the 1980s, the foundation made gifts to the university that resulted in the Cameron School of Business and Cameron Hall being named for the family.

“For over 13 years I have walked by the portrait of Dan, Betty and Bruce Cameron as I walk into the dean’s suite,” said Larry Clark, dean of the Cameron School of Business. “The portrait is there as a reminder of those for whom we’re named, and we carry their name with pride.”

Clark recalled one of his last conversations with Betty Cameron.

“She expressed her wish that her family, her children and grandchildren, would continue to have an interest in the Cameron School of Business, because the school was very important to her and Dan," he said.

Betty Cameron was a former member of the UNCW board of trustees and board of visitors.